Thursday, November 30, 2017

The Republicans' Forty Pieces of Silver

I think I'm going to have to back off on politics and Facebook for a while. Watching what is happening to my country is just too depressing as a daily diet. I belong to a group called The Deplorables. I don't know how that happened. I certainly never "liked" their page and I never share their posts. Still, for some reason, they are always the first posts on my timeline....sometimes six or seven in a row....or more. How does that happen do you suppose? Do they pay Facebook to get preferential placement? I've often thought that a significant number of them must be Russian bots trying to sow distrust and division among Americans. If so, they are doing a great job. We all know, as the old saying goes, "politics ain't beanbag." It can be rough and dirty. If you are thin-skinned, you might want to stay out of the political kitchen. But The Deplorables are beyond rough and dirty. They are vicious; they are vile; they are malevolent. They are hate-filled in a way I've never seen in America before. They are frightening.

And, oh, do they love themselves some Donald Trump. The nastier he is, the more they adore him.

For all my early years, I loved the political skirmish. Ronald Reagan and George Bush were my least favorite presidents but I didn't despise them and I didn't despise their supporters. I didn't think they were traitors. I didn't think they hated America. I believed politics was a cycle. You win some and lose some. When you lose, you fight to win the next time and the other side does the same. We all had America's best interests at heart, we simply disagreed on how to achieve them.

Now, I'm sitting here in mid-America thinking America has totally lost it's way and that has been going on since long before Trump. He is just the culmination of it.

I believe it started with Bill Clinton's impeachment. The Republican's knew what Clinton did was not a high crime or misdemeanor but it seems that this is the time they decided they would no longer play by any rules. They just wanted to win....period. Ken Starr had been the special prosecutor for 14 months before we heard of Monica Lewinsky. It was an investigation in search of a crime. And putting all Clinton's most personal information on the internet was just an extra humiliation. They did it because they could add that extra jab, not because it was "the public's right to know", as they claimed.

And then came Obama and again the Republicans put all the traditions and rules and customs and honor of Congress behind them. They obstructed everything Obama tried to do, even things they believed in before, like the Individual Mandate and Cap and Trade. They engaged in endless, expensive investigations that went nowhere although they got tons of mileage out of their scurrilous allegations. They held up Obama's nominations so there were judgeships and leadership positions kept vacant. The last straw was holding up the nomination of a Supreme Court justice for an entire year.

During the Obama years, it was the Tea Party that made the false claims about the president not being born in the U.S., being a Muslim, hating America and those of us who voted for him got tarred with the same brush. I guess they've morphed into the Deplorables. In the last few years, I've been called a communist, a socialist, a libtard, a traitor and an America hater.

That brings us to Donald Trump. We have actually elected a man totally unfit to be our president. He's erratic and unstable. He's cruel and corrupt. He's ignorant and crude. There is not a single molecule of class in his entire bullying, braggartly soul. Our allies hate him, our enemies love him. He's a racist and a misogynist.

And again, it is all down to the Republicans. He belongs to them. They could exercise some semblance of control over this monstrous man but they don't because they need him to rip off our healthcare, reward their donors, and screw us on "tax reform". It's too late for them. They sold their soul to the devil long ago and now he's come to collect our democracy.